


Complex Oedipus

by orphan_account



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-25
Updated: 2012-01-25
Packaged: 2017-10-30 02:46:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/326911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even as an adult, Mycroft feels a draft of fear standing outside his mother’s bedroom door.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Complex Oedipus

Even as an adult, Mycroft feels a draft of fear standing outside his mother’s bedroom door. Will she be angry at him today? Will she be too sick to cuddle him? Has he been good enough for her to love him? Has he done it right this time?

  


It’s the smell. That smell, the smell of being four years old, face buried in the warmth of his mother’s belly, as she stroked his hair and told him how much she loved him. Mycroft had looked up at her and promised “I’m going to marry you when I grow up.”

And it burns him now, all the terrible Freudian implications of that sentence, but if Mycroft’s honest with himself - which he thinks he is often - his whole life might as well be one of Freud’s case studies, the son’s unswerving devotion to mother; no matter which form mother takes.

  


She might have been Queen and Country to the child who curled up against her in that bed, surely she was the moon and stars. Mycroft knew, always, always knew, that his one job in life was to keep her happy; to fix the headaches and the sicknesses and the wild, ferocious moods which overtook her. Only he was worthy of her, and he would prove it, again and again. He would prove it by standing there in her rage, as she yelled at him and called him names and accused him of things he in his six year old innocence  could not possibly have done. He would prove it by being good, so good that Mummy would have to love him again.

  


He was very worried when the new baby came. He was worried for Mummy’s health, because she was in bed the whole last three months. He was more worried that she would love the new baby more than him.

Mycroft’s father takes him aside and tells him that he needs to be responsible now, he has a small brother that he must take care of.  And the small brother, that Sherlock, he needs more care than most. Even as a newborn he’s never still, never quiet. He shrieks for hours on end, colic so bad it drives mummy to her bed and Mycroft does his best to look after everything, to take care of the baby and mummy and organise the cleaners. He is eight years old and blindingly efficient, all to keep the peace in that room, the holy of holies where Mother lies in bed, sometimes sickly, sometimes tired, and mycroft cuddles up next to her and knows, just absolutely knows, that he alone is responsible for her happiness.

  


Sherlock is impossible to control. As a toddler he climbs everything, investigates everywhere, starting his experiments at age three by picking up a large rock and hurling it with all his strength towards the window in the nursery. The window pane explodes in a firework of glass and noise, shards raining all over the two boys. Mummy is in bed, Daddy is at work, and Mycroft is stuck scolding this terrible child.

“Why on earth would you do that?”

“I wanted to see what would happen!”

“You could have asked me! I would have told you.”

“But I wanted to  see it!”

And Mycroft loses all reason and grace as he grabs Sherlock’s arm and turns him and smacks him, hard on the back of the leg, and the shriek Sherlock lets out makes Mycroft’s blood run cold. Mummy will hear that. Mummy will know Mycroft lost his temper, wasn’t responsible. She might get sick again. She’ll yell at him, or worse, not speak to him, turn away from him and Mycroft will be in hell until she relents.

He gathers his young brother to him and hugs him and murmurs how sorry he is. He will fix it. He will fix everything.

  


And for years that’s how it works, Mycroft the peacemaker, Mycroft the fixer-upper. Mycroft who keeps an eye on everything in the house especially his brother.

Sherlock is active, wild with insight and imagination and he never takes something as writ without testing it out for himself. And that left Mycroft to wheedle and cajole and yell and intimidate, to quietly manipulate the world so that the waves that Sherlock leaves in his wake are turned to ripples inside the bedroom where Mummy sleeps.

  


“Sherlock, put that away!”

“Sherlock, we will not be going until you put your shoes on.”

“Sherlock Holmes, stop that.”

“Don’t touch that Sherlock!”

  


And Mycroft always knows what Sherlock is up to, what he is doing, and he carefully draws lines and boxes around him, allowing Sherlock to think he is rebelling when he is doing no more than spinning his wheels.

  


Then Sherlock throws another rock.

  


“Daddy’s having an affair. With the woman who works in the box office at the theatre.” 

And in his nine year old  prodigiousness Sherlock doesn’t notice the weight of the silence which follows as he explains how he matched his father’s movements to the advertisements for shows in the paper, and how he spotted the number of ticket stubs, and about the particular smell of rosin and wax. Of lipstick stains and strange marks. It is only at the point where Sherlock finally winds down that he realises just what he’s done.

  


Their father leaves and Mummy retreats to the bedroom, suffering from week-long headaches; sobbing and raging as Mycroft rubs her back.

  


Mycroft is sixteen and no longer has any pretence that he is the only man in Mummy’s life. But Sherlock has ruined her, utterly and completely and she doesn’t hate him. No, she tells him it was fine to tell about the affair, tells him she still loves him. His violin playing makes her smile and Mycroft hates Sherlock more than he ever thought possible.

  


Mummy is wracked with sickness and despair whenever Sherlock runs away - which he does four times before he leaves home at eighteen. And Mycroft fixes it, that’s what he does, he fixes everything. He goes and finds his scummy little brother and cleans him off and takes him home. Every time, he stands there in front of his mother, offering her the solution to all her sadness. And every time that solution isn’t him.

  


The drugs happen, experiments gone awry and Sherlock disappears. Even Mycroft can’t find him so it’s a relief, a desperate relief when that policeman arrests him. And Mycroft looks into Lestrade and begins to build another box around his brother, only this time he lets in a few people, people to keep watch over him and keep him occupied and spinning his wheels. Because every time something like this happens it upsets Mummy so much, and Mycroft cannot allow Sherlock to keep hurting her. It may be unethical, but some things are more important than Sherlock and his little puzzles.

  


Eventually Mycroft gets some help. John Watson, as staid and solid as the father that Sherlock needed and he’s there to feed and chase and clean up after Sherlock. It’s not perfect, John has irritating habits like helping the brat run around London playing detective, but he stops the random destruction and keeps Sherlock away from the drugs, and finally,  finally,  Mycroft can relax. Get on with real work.

  


It is in that real work that he finds James Moriarty. A handsome psychopath who can withstand every illegality the British government can beat him with. But Mycroft... Mycroft can make him talk. Mycroft can do what no one else ever could, calm the storm and make Moriarty talk. And all Mycroft has to do is tell him about Sherlock.

  


It’s a relief to voice his anger. His resentments. The bitter tale of being the chubby older brother to a beautiful, tempestuous genius. Of having to be the responsible one. Of being the only one in the room smarter than Sherlock, and yet never able to show it. Of fighting to earn his mothers love when Sherlock seemed to be given it so freely. He needs to tell this story and Moriarty, the charming Irishman, he listens. And he gets far more out of Mycroft than Mycroft realises. 

  


So then the world explodes again. And Mycroft sits with the knowledge sick in his gut that Moriarty was never interested in him, never cared about him at all - he just wanted Sherlock. Like everyone else in Mycroft’s life, he was only interested in  Sherlock. And Mycroft, who could read anyone who came into his life like a book, he had been blinded. Blinded by the jealousy and the pettiness and the anger that had sat in him since the moment he was led into a hospital room and saw Mummy cradling Sherlock in her arms.

  


Now he stands outside her door and that childish fear is back inching its way up his spine. He is ten years old and he has to tell Mummy he hit his little brother. But he’s not a little boy anymore, not on the outside, so he squares his shoulders and opens the door to the master bedroom.

  


“Mummy? Mummy, dear... I have some dreadful news about Sherlock.”


End file.
